What’s New in WordPress 4.8?

The schedule for WordPress 4.8 is released. It will be the first major WordPress release of 2017. We have been following the development closely, and we are excited to report that the final version is expected to be released around June 8, 2017. In this article, we will show you what’s coming in WordPress 4.8 with features and screenshots.

The official beta release will happen on May 12th, which means no more new features will be added until the final release of WordPress 4.8. However, some of the features in beta may not make it into the final release.

Visual Editor in The Text Widget

By default WordPress comes with a plain text widget. This widget contains a simple text box where you can add text and HTML code.

Beginners who are not familiar with HTML were unable to add links or use basic formatting in the text widget. This will change in WordPress 4.8.

The new text widget comes with a simple visual and text editor. Similar to the one you see on the post edit screen.

This will allow beginner users to easily add links, create lists, or make text bold / italic without writing any HTML code.

The New Image Widget

WordPress 4.8 will introduce an image widget which will allow users to easily add images into the sidebar. You will be able to upload an image right from the widget or select any image from the WordPress media library.

Clicking on the select image will open the WordPress media uploader popup where users can upload or select an image. After inserting the image, users will be able to see a preview of the image in the widget area.

The New Video Widget

Similar to the image widget, WordPress 4.8 will also introduce the Video widget. It will allow users to easily upload videos to their sidebar or display any video from YouTube, Vimeo, or any other oEmbed provider.

Note: we recommend that you should never upload videos to your WordPress site. Instead, you should use a video hosting provider like YouTube or Vimeo. Simply click on the ‘Select Video’ button in the widget, and then click on ‘Insert from URL’ link.

Add the URL of the video you want to embed and then click on the ‘Add to widget’ button. The media uploader popup will disappear, and you will see a thumbnail preview of your video inside the widget.

WordPress News and Events Dashboard Widget

WordPress 4.8 will also introduce the WordPress Events and News dashboard widget. It will appear on your WordPress dashboard page and will contain information about WordPress news as well as WordPress events near your location. It will replace the older WordPress news widget which only showed WordPress news.

If you have multiple users on your website, then the widget will show them events based on their location. It will automatically try to detect a user’s location by sending their timezone, locale, and IP address to api.wordpress.org.

Users can also edit the location to manually enter their location or view events from any other location.

Under The Hood Improvements

These updates improve significant parts of the WordPress core but are mainly intended for developers.

The customizer pane will now be proportionally sized on larger screens. #32296